This, coming from someone who has been playing Elite: Dangerous since the beta phase.
I love the game...love it. The flight model takes some getting used to, I'm using an Xbox controller with good success, but once you nail it, oh my, it is quite satisfying. Going top speed into a station, dodging a big trade ship and then precisely hitting your dock with nothing but the lock of the magnetic landing gear is just yummy. There is just enough yaw on an upgraded ship that, when you are tracking a target, there should be no need to readjust your roll. Upgrades are key to making ships from blubbering cows to dangerous wolves. All in all, I'm having fun and have been putting quite a few hours into it.
Anyway, more of my opinion below...
Travel, specifically Super Cruise will really make you appreciate how big star systems are or drive you completely nuts. Even travelling at many times the speed of light, you will find that a small number of systems have stars and planets that are a 5, 10, 20 minute travel to. Super Cruise is also a mode where you will have to adjust to a new flight model. Massive objects impose a limit on your max speed so you will need to maneuver into the best routes while also using what I call planet braking to quickly slow down for your destination (you can also just keep your throttle in auto mode and arrive more slowly). Jumping from system to system is fast and can be done from anywhere as long as the target system is in your ship's range. You will always drop at the primary star of a system. If you have the range, you can get to any point of light you see. Jumping uses a lot of fuel so keep an eye on it. A fuel scoop will refill your tank with hydrogen from most stars. Whatever you do, don't take a mission to Alpha Centauri unless you have 90 minutes to spare...that system is freaking spread out!
PVE is a cake walk. You'll be taking down Anacondas (the biggest baddest ship you can buy) fairly easily once you've put a few million in a Viper or Cobra. PVP fights can go very quickly, even with two fully kitted combat Vipers with shield cells (shield recharge to prevent the shield from breaking). One ill-timed boost, or forgetting to watch how you have power distributed can lead to you losing your shields and then being disabled by a commander that has wisely targeted your thrusters. Bounty hunting can be a lot of fun, if you know where to look. There are commanders flying about with some massive bounties on their heads and can prove quite lucrative if you can find them (the hard part) and destroy them. Piracy is ok. The balance between traders and pirates seems off as I can escape in a basic trade ship without much effort. Also, pirates will find themselves with very few places to find reprieve as NPC bounty hunters are relentless. However, it does seem Frontier is committed to making updates, so we'll see if that improves.
Trade can be quite frustrating before it is overwhelmingly rewarding. The economy is dynamic and will shift based on what players do and on what events occur. A civil war (which is caused by players tipping the faction balance in a system) will increase demand for food, weapons and other commodities while exhausting supply. The trade view on the galaxy map is only mildly helpful. It shows trades and their relative frequency between systems. However, NPCs and players making those trades might be turning a poor profit or a player might have just purchased the wrong commodity and sold it at a loss to unload it. There are trade tools, which some consider bad form, that use crowd sourced data to identify the best routes. Trading, as in many space games, is the primary way to make a lot of credits fastest.
Mining is basic. Shoot rocks with mining laser until smaller rocks fall off. Target the chunks, if valuable enough, scoop it up and put it through your refinery. (Note: Scooping is an art, you have to fly the chunks into a scoop on your ship) Collect enough rocks and you'll have 1 unit/ton of a Metal or Mineral. This can be very lucrative if you can find a Pristine Metallic asteroid belt or planetary ring. This will yield high amounts of Gold, Silver, Platinum and Palladium. Player and NPC pirates will patrol these zones, so either get good with using the mining laser as an attack weapon (not easy), bring a ship capable of mining and combat, or learn to run towards system authorities for help. Taking a Cobra mining can be very profitable as you collect bounties on pirates who try to interrupt your mining operation.
Multiplayer is still evolving it seems. With 100 billion star systems to visit, you might think you'd never see anyone. However, there are 160k systems with stations in them and GalNet news updates draw players in to hot zones where civil war has emerged or to the event areas added by Frontier. At peak times, I've been playing on full instances with 30 other commanders. While that is the most you can be playing directly with at any one time, as people move around, different players will migrate on and off of your instance. I haven't experienced much in the way of network problems but there are reports on the forums that people are not seeing other players. While high bandwidth isn't required, a stable connection is. If you have an ISP that has frequent drops, you will not be able to interact much with others. If the network issues are too troublesome, or you'd prefer to play with only NPCs, Solo mode is available. Though, you will still need a minimally basic internet connection as the galaxy economy and events are shared across all modes of play.
Role play. There is no forced role play in open play. I still RP, but I'm also basing myself well away from the "arenas" or starter areas. If I want to be absolutely certain that everyone I encounter is going to RP there are RP Private Groups to join. However, players in those groups are bit too spread out to be of any good. Generally, most people I encounter are willing to RP if you start out with it. Those few that blatantly refuse to RP, usually find my beam lasers lodged in their heat exhaust as my character is quite paranoid and does not respond well to strange behaviours
There is a lot of excitement over the features still coming. Player Wings, a travesty it was missing at launch, will be coming out soon where players can create teams/groups so they can more easily communicate, find each other and co-operate. I'm excited about atmospheric flight and landing on planet surfaces. I really hope they make that seamless and interesting instead of a landing animation. Others are more into the FPS expansion which will allow you to walk about your ship, on stations and possibly on planets. I think it is a mistake to detract from the cockpit but it is a highly anticipated expansion.
The game is good. I'd recommend watching some YouTube videos or Twitch before committing as it is not for everyone. If you do decide to become a commander, you can find me in game as CMDR Monk Edgecomb (a quasi-continuation of the little RP I did here at Disco for the Blood Dragons). I've got a great hideout, too far from the drop in point to be of interest to passers by but it is fully decked with all the ships and upgrades.